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As technology improves, on-screen avatars look more and more like real people. When they start looking too real, though, we pull away. These almost-humans aren't quite right they look creepy, like zombies.
James Surowiecki
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James Surowiecki
Age: 57
Born: 1967
Born: April 30
Journalist
Writer
Meriden
Connecticut
James Michael Surowiecki
Humans
Technology
Zombies
Looks
Quite
Improves
Right
Almost
Creepy
Real
Looking
Zombie
Like
Start
Screen
People
Though
Screens
Away
Pull
Look
Aren
Avatars
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Sometimes even a smart crowd will make a mistake.
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On the simplest level, telecommuting makes it harder for people to have the kinds of informal interactions that are crucial to the way knowledge moves through an organization. The role that hallway chat plays in driving new ideas has become a cliche of business writing, but that doesn't make it less true.
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Workers who come to the U.S. see their wages and their standard of living boosted sharply simply by crossing the border. That's a good thing, and one of the best arguments for immigration reform, even if you'll rarely hear a politician make it.
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The U.S. is excellent at importing cheap products from the rest of the world. Let's try importing some human capital instead.
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The history of the Internet is, in part, a series of opportunities missed.
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A general principle of good taxation is that similar jobs, and similar kinds of compensation, should be taxed the same way: otherwise, the government is effectively subsidizing some jobs over others.
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In the struggle between capital and labor, more often than not capital has won, because the real source of value for most companies has historically been the hard assets that they owned and controlled.
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Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them.
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